Inexperienced opposite

We’ve all been through it: inheriting a PPC account that someone else has managed. And we’ve all had that “WTF” moment after looking under the hood, when we’re baffled by how the account even survived to this point. But you never truly know what drove the previous PPC manager to do what they did — were they being downright dirty, were they just inexperienced, or were they overwhelmed with so many other tasks that they got sloppy? It could be any one of those circumstances. And hey, it’s a small world, so the last thing you want to do when inheriting a PPC account is bash the previous agency or professional to your new client or boss. It certainly does take some restraint as you’re pulling apart the logic of an account that doesn’t seem to make any sense. My agency recently inherited an account with some major blunders, and it’s been haunting me as I try to figure out why they made the choices they did. I wanted to share with … [Read more...] about Downright Dirty, Inexperienced Or Overwhelmed? 

The settlement that ended the litigation against Google’s book scanning/search project must still be approved by the courts, although tentative approval has already been given. Among other aspects of the settlement, Google is to pay $125 million to fund a “Book Rights Registry” that will help resolve claims by authors and publishers and cover legal fees. But now, as the time for final court approval nears, a range of objections are coming out. One such objection is coming from a group based at NYU law school, an effort partly funded by Microsoft. There have accordingly been some questions about the “independence” of this initiative. But another prominent voice to object to the settlement, without any perceived conflict of interest, belongs to UC Berkeley Law School professor Pamela Samuelson. She is the director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at Boalt Hall (the law school) and an expert on intellectual property and the internet. In a blog … [Read more...] about Growing Opposition To Google Book Search Settlement

I’m always looking for an edge in PPC so that my campaign’s performance will shine in a very competitive landscape. Back in 2013, I started talking about how to use programming to set up time-saving and performance-boosting automations with AdWords Scripts, at the time among the newest capabilities in AdWords. But now that we’re about to head into 2017, there’s an entirely different AdWords power feature that is starting to let us use programming to improve performance: ad customizers (“customizers” for short). Customizers sit at the intersection of two of my favorite topics: feed-based advertising and programming. I’ll cover some innovative ways to use the older feed-based capabilities, but I’ll also cover some of the brand-new programming-based ways to use the feature to show different ads based on the device or the audience list a user is on. Ad customizers just got new capabilities The customizers’ capabilities that have now … [Read more...] about Ad customizers just got a whole lot more powerful

When it really comes down to it, SEO and local SEO are just forms of marketing. Much like a Yellow Pages listing, they represent a way to get your business in front of interested consumers. With Yellow Page listings, as in most forms of advertising media, you can simply pay to appear. You choose your slot, pay the piper and you are in — so the marketer’s focus tends to be more on traditional marketing elements, such as the creative and the messaging. SEO is a little different. You can’t just pay to appear in the local results (yet). There is a whole technical, black-box process to follow in an effort to improve your visibility and to appear in the local or organic search results for your business. This shifts the focus away from the traditional advertising and marketing mindset and more toward unlocking the mystery of strong local rankings. The purpose of this article is to help local businesses address this mindset switch. The goal is still to achieve local … [Read more...] about The 16 Secrets Of Guerrilla Local SEO

In my column this week, I’ll try to answer that question using some data-driven analysis — but first, I thought it would be fun to take a quick trip down memory lane…. The Biggest AdWords Apocalypse That Never Happened? Ever since Google announced Enhanced Campaigns back in February, search marketers have been moaning and groaning about the loss of control. Search marketing pundits were tripping over themselves making doomsday predictions about how Enhanced Campaigns were nothing more than a big conspiracy theory to drive up average cost per click (CPC). The initial reaction to Enhanced Campaigns was pretty bad. Big search marketing companies were quick to make disastrous predictions. Like this one from Adobe that predicted CPCs would rise by 6%. Not to be outdone by Adobe, other vendors chimed in with their own studies, each predicting a more apocalyptic outcome than the last. Here’s one from The Search Agency claiming that Google CPCs rose a massive 21.2% … [Read more...] about New Data Suggest AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Actually Work